The Enforcer

Have we plateaued at a new level of absurdity (maybe 10-3), with the police now acting as the enforcement arm for the FAA? Some suggest that this amounts to a huge an unfunded mandate and is apparently another misstep in a folly conga line.

The authorization of deadly force in Attachment A. What has this country and government come to? Who would have ever thought that the citizenry would let themselves be subjugated to this type of a unilateral autocracy?

People that I talk to, manufacturers and end-users tell they are afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation from the FAA. Is this a representative government or is that over and I didn’t get the memo? Folks follow the special interest model as the norm. The FAA works for you, and we should be incensed at the level of incompetence that is the UAS airspace integration effort.

There is a reasonable expectation that hundreds of thousands of these are already flying in the NAS, and the mantra from the regulator is that safety is key, and we want to get the rule right. Okay, but is the NAS safer with no regulation? Or, are we hiding behind we said “no” and that makes it safe enough? Many believe that to be a weak argument and doe’s little to bolster the notion that the safety of the NAS is the primary goal. The assumptions with that and that the modelers are safer then the commercial end-user have to be reexamined.

Every other group working the effort is telling me that I should be encouraged as things are going to get better. However, I’ve been hearing that someone is on the case for years, but efforts like this once let out into the wild are hard to recapture.

You as a stakeholder have to understand the pushback from these efforts. Again, for the record, I will state my motives; I have none besides seeing as many people as possible being able to employ unmanned technology. The DoD vendor model and people are moving into the large companies and those that are supposedly “watchdogs” are lapdogs working solely for their company or benefactor motives. The rising stars are inept and okay with onerous regulation as they believe that it will benefit their individual businesses and stockholders or whomever they can find to pay the tab.

What you are hearing and seeing is an unorganized monster wasting tons of money and more importantly, your valuable time.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

FAA Law Enforcement Guidelines

This is where Patrick recorded Jim saying the FAA were sending out this guidance to law enforcement agencies.